FUE Simultaneous Extraction and Placement

Simultaneous extraction and placement of FUE grafts is a novel technique of hair restoration that improves the efficiency and growth of transplanted hair. FUE hair transplantation has been gaining in popularity the last few years over the more traditional methods of hair restoration. Along with the increase in the number of FUE patients, we have been improving the efficiency of our procedures. The survival rate of FUE grafts has been the subject of many studies in the last few years. Included in those studies were comparisons of strip and FUE follicular grafts and comparisons of the FUE grafts that have been implanted by forceps and implanters. We now have more information about the methods we have available to minimize the manipulation of the fragile FUE grafts and how to improve our growth rate even more.

Simultaneous Extraction and Placement FUE is based on some modifications of our previous methods and some of our equipment that allows us to implant the extracted follicular unit grafts into the recipient areas shortly after they are extracted.

There are several elements involved in performing simultaneous extraction and placement techniques such as:

Evolution

Hair transplant was traditionally done through a strip method so the initial FUE procedures in most hair restoration centers were not far from the extracting and placing of grafts in strip procedures. That consisted of harvesting all grafts, then making sites before placing them. With the old method, the grafts could stay out of body for about 5 hours on average.

The use of premade sites in our FUE procedures has slightly improved our average out-of-body-time (OBT) to 4.5 hours.

The next step was to use Serial Extraction and Placement method, which was initially introduced by Dr. Mohebi to the field of hair transplantation. This method involved breaking down the time of a procedure to two or three sessions to minimize the time that each graft has to stay out of body. Each session included an extraction of grafts for an hour or two followed by the placement of the grafts. Using this method, we have reduced OBT of grafts to 2 hours. The shorter time grafts stay out of body with this method is expected to maximize the viability of the FUE grafts.

Our next step was to change the patient’s head orientation so a placer could implant grafts while the extraction was in process. It was challenging at first for the team of 3 to be able to do scoring and pulling grafts while implanting them at the same time. As our team became more acquainted with extracting and placing at the same time, we have improved our flow even more by having hair transplant technicians use magnifying loupes with longer focal distance. This allowed the team to keep working with a proper magnification while keeping a longer distance from the head of the patient. Our team has reduced the out of body time of grafts to about one hour on average using simultaneous extraction and placement method. This method has also reduced the overall time of the procedure.

Our team has never settled for the status quo in the last decade and is constantly striving to improve the quality of our hair restoration procedures. We believe in staying at the forefront of hair transplant methods rather than follow trends in this medical field. We remain committed to providing the most current hair restoration techniques in order to give our patients the results they desire.